Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Jon Rothstein ranks the Georgia hoops squad #9 in the conference. Kentucky, Florida, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas are his top 5. Alabama, Ole Miss, Auburn, Georgia and Texas A&M are ranked 6 through 10, and Vanderbilt, LSU, South Carolina and Mississippi State round out his list.

Kentucky and Florida should be good. UK will continue to "out-talent" the rest of the league and Billy Donovan down at Florida is a great coach. I was thinking that Florida was a year away from making a splash in basketball again, but Rothstein believes that Patric Young will take a huge step forward during the 2012/2013 season. Besides that, they didn't do too shabbily last year (Elite Eight loss to Louisville), and you can see from this article that Young and Prather are built to be ready to play.

The ranking for Georgia seems about right until we know whether Marcus Thornton is healthy. I'm concerned about the point guard position, too. Charles Mann and Vincent Williams will have to play a lot, and play well.

Rothstein named KCP as a member of his "Preseason First Team". He did not have any Dawgs in his "Ten Breakout Players", nor in his "Ten Freshmen to Watch". He had a total of five players listed in his "Under the Radar Freshmen" picks, so I'm not surprised that Morris, Gaines and Mann were not included. Our three new perimeter guys can play, though, so maybe they'll be motivated to go out and show that they are just as good as the other freshmen entering the SEC.